Tag: service

Yesterday an old client of mine decided it’s time to take a more direct approach in getting some serious traffic to their website, so they looked up a local SEO company who apparently is one of the best SEO companies here in Estonia.

The so called “professional SEO company“, whose name I would gladly announce to the rest of the world if I knew I wouldn’t get sued, asked for a whopping 700 EUR for 3 months of some vaguely described “SEO services” after just a brief phone call from my client who only wanted to get targeted website traffic.

I must say I was quite shocked when I heard the price so I asked my client to send me their confidential emails and agreements for me to study, just out of curiosity of course. What I discovered was insane!

Incorrect seo website analysis

I have no clue what software, if any, they were using to put together this particular SEO analysis report, but right off the bat I saw that the report stated my client’s website had absolutely no meta description tags on their website. This was the most obvious lie that I detected, because I knew for a fact I had put the meta description tags in his site myself when I designed it. I checked it again just in case and sure enough, the tags were all present!

In those confidential emails the SEO company also mentioned over and over again how poorly ranked the website was, constantly referencing the bad excuse of a SEO analysis report all the time which had strategically placed red X marks all over it to make it look like everything was broken and overall negative. So not only did they lie about his website, they were pumping fear into my client who now believed the SEO company is the only one who can save their website from imminent doom.

AdWords intermediate

From the confidential agreements I found out that they were getting all the actual targeted visitors simply through Google AdWords. And since my clients niche, especially in Estonia, is very small, the clicks bought from Google don’t really cost all that much. So where in the hell was all the 700 EUR going? All they were doing was mediate between my client and Google AdWords, making sure that a huge portion of the money went in their own greedy pockets.

Only 3 fixed ads

For 700 EUR the company offered my client just three fixed AdWords advertisements that my client had to write himself (even though he has absolutely no clue on how to write an ad that actually gets clicked!). Normally if you’re promoting your website through AdWords, you put up at least 10 different ads and analyze how each one is performing through the course of, lets say, 1-2 months, but this particular company decided it’s enough to simply take three ads, put them up and forget about them.

Why did I let this happen?

If I had known my client had a budget this big, I would have immediately gone the same, AdWords route. However, from my previous talks with my client it was obvious they didn’t want to spend a lot of money so I didn’t even mention AdWords to them and simply optimized his website for search engines for free.

This approach doesn’t get targeted visitors immediately, but it will definitely pay off in the long run once the website has naturally grown in the “eyes” of search engines. I guess my client wasn’t patient enough and wanted immediate results, but even so, anyone can promote their own website through AdWords and there is absolutely no need for an intermediate.

Conclusion

If you don’t know a thing about SEO, website optimization or getting targeted traffic to your website, the best advice I can give you is to stay away from big SEO companies who will use fear and lies to sell you things that you either don’t need or could very well do on your own.

Unlike the professional SEO companies, I don’t use fear and lies to make my clients pay insane amounts of money for a few minutes of work so if you need advice on this sort of thing, don’t hesitate to contact me. I will gladly analyze your website for free and provide free SEO consulting as well.

One day my sister came to me and said that her phone, the Samsung Galaxy S II, could no longer be charged. Something was apparently wrong with the charger port because when I held the cable at a right angle the phone lit up for a brief moment. Because the warranty was still valid I suggested my father to take the phone to the local shop where the phone was purchased and have them fix it… and this is where things got really stupid!

First he had to pay 20EUR in order to have them look at the phone. I figured out what was wrong with the phone in a few minutes, but it took them 2 days to finally call and say that the motherboard needed to be replaced and that the warranty would not cover it because they had concluded that my sister had broken it and it was no accident.

When my father asked how much will it cost to have the motherboard replaced, the tech guy gave a solid answer- 180 EUR. Obviously he didn’t pay for it because he had already paid them 20 EUR for looking at the phone and now they were asking 180 EUR more- the phone isn’t even worth that much as new!

While my little sis ended up with a cool new phone I decided to not give up and try to fix the Galaxy S II myself. How hard could it be?! So I opened up the phone and looked inside… I saw that the part of the motherboard that had a charger port could actually be easily disconnected from the main board. Upon closer examination I found some product serial numbers on it that I typed into eBay and this is what I found:

I was shocked to see that the total cost for this part was just $2,66 USD. I couldn’t believe it was the only thing broken in the phone, but I placed an order just in case… I just HAD to try myself!

After about a month of waiting (item came directly from China) it finally arrived in the mailbox. I carefully removed the old one from the phone and connected the connector leaving it all open on the table just for the sake of testing it out… I was nervous a little… I carefully connected the charger to the phone… and IT WORKED! The phone started charging immediately.

What the… The professional tech support that we trusted would have taken 180 EUR (total of 200 EUR) for this? Wow… just wow. This is the last time I take anything to these guys. This experience inspired me to write this post and propose an idea what to do the next time a gadget of yours breaks down. Here it is.

PROPER way of dealing with broken gadgets

1. Try to fix it yourself

First of all analyze the situation. Try to understand what’s wrong and then try to fix it yourself with the knowledge you already have.

2. Learn how to fix it yourself

If you don’t know how to fix it at first, try to learn more about the device. How it works, what parts are required etc. It’s a fun way of learning something new!

3. Take it to someone who CAN fix it

If all else fails and you can’t fix it yourself you should probably take it to someone who can fix it. Try to find a tech nerd instead of a corporation though. Apparently they’re after profits and show little interest in actually helping you.

4. Recycle it

Sometimes things just die and there’s nothing you can do about it. If your nerd tech friend couldn’t fix it perhaps it’s time to say goodbye. Make sure to take it to a recycling center so it would be reused to make something nice.

In the monetary system people will rip you off

It sucks, but it’s true. Just like these tech support guys were after a gigantic profit you can easily get ripped off by anyone who values money highly. Remember, money is just paper. It doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t fix the phone with money… I fixed it with a spare part. Sure, it cost me $2,66 because we’re living in a monetary system, but you get the general idea 🙂

I definitely support The Venus Project and a resource based economy where money is simply obsolete and knowledge and a better understanding of how things work are the truly valuable commodities.